Hate Crime, Schmate Crime?

Remember the Columbia prof who found a noose hanging in her office doorway? A grand jury is looking into it and its looking a little suspicious.

The New York Post:

According to sources, the subpoenas obtained recently by the NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force and prosecutors demanded the college hand over a laundry list of records pertaining to embattled professor Madonna Constantine, whose colleague found a 4-foot hangman's noose on her office doorknob last October.

The incident happened at the height of the school's probe of plagiarism charges against her.

Wouldn't be the first time a hate crime turned out to be self-inflicted.

Opening Day

First pitch in 26 minutes. And Obama's advertising on Comcast.

UPDATE: He says the oil companies should pay a penalty on windfall profits since we pay over three dollars a gallon for gas. What's next? Penalities on overpaid baseball players for high tickets prices.

UPDATE II: Maybe it's just the lighting. but what's up with Brett Myer's Groucho eyebrows?

An Educational Success Story Rewarded

The Williamson Trade School is one of Delaware County's great but -- far too quiet --educational success stories.

Yesterday, the school made a little noise by earning the respect (and $40 million in donations) from two local philanthropists, Lee Rowan and the Lenfests.

Nice job by the school's administration and the donors to get together for such a worthy cause.

Trade and vocational schools too often get the short end of the educational stick. While most high school kids are learning the joys of parroting the latest craze in environmental science or reading the Cliff's Notes for Moby Dick, the students at Williamson actually learn how to make things. And do things.

We need more school like Williamson in this country and the attention (and dough) of big wheels like Rowan and Lenfest could make that happen.

The Wit of Bill Mahr

"New Rule: If Phil Spector gets to kill people, Mary Ann from Gilligan's Island is allowed to drive with pot in her car."

Isn't he funny? Isn't it funny how screwed up our legal system and social priorities are.

Only, let's see Phil Spector was arrested and tried for murder and managed a hung jury. It was O.J. that got away with murder. But somehow that joke isn't as funny.

In the meantime, Mary Ann will get probation or whatever and never go to trial. Maybe she should hire the silver-tongued, marvelously-witty Mahr and go to trial. She could get a hung jury too and all would be right with the world.

I wonder if she and her lawyer had focused less on her "gambling addiction" and more on her apology and taking personal responsibilty for her thievery, the judge might have been more impressed and considered a slightly lesser sentence.

Probably not. But at least she could have gone to the slammer with a little more dignity.

Economic Gloom and Doom

There's a disconnect between what people see around them and what they're told is happening. The first is upsetting (rising gas prices, falling home prices, fewer jobs) but reflects the normal reverses of a $14 trillion economy. The second ("panic," "financial meltdown") suggests the onset of something catastrophic and totally outside the experience of ordinary people. The economy, said The New York Times last week, may be on "the brink of the worst recession in a generation" -- an ominous warning.

There Will Be Cheese Whiz

These sorts of inquisitions need to shown up for what they are. The country would be a better place if these sort of bureaucrats and thought-crime bureacracies were put out of business. They won't be though. These people like their little gigs of "pretending to care" about "victims" and the power to play judge and jury a little too much.

Obama's Security Breach: It's Bush's Fault

The Washington Times reports a couple of computer contractors for the State Department accessed Barack Obama's passport records. The two were fired and one was disciplined.

The motive for the breaching so far appears to be nothing more than "idle curiosity" but the investigation continues. The Obama campaign reacted in typical political fashion by blaming the Bush Administration.

"(This is) an outrageous breach of security and privacy, even from an Administration that has shown little regard for either over the last eight years," a campaign spokesman said.

Given that it was, in some sense, the Bush Administration that caught and fired these people, that's a pretty lame charge. What if it turns out that the two contract workers who violated their clearances were nothing that Obama fans who were curious about the comings and goings of their hero?

Nevemind, this is good for Obama, in so far as it will remind others that when it comes to such illegal snooping it was much worse during the Clinton Administraiton when hundreds of FBI files on prominent Republicans were discovered in the White House. Hillary was up to her neck in that scandal.

I think the most telling thing about this episode so far is what it says about the Obama campaign and its willingness to jump on any bit of bad news and twist it to their advantage. This is, of course, what political campaigns do. But given their candidate's high-minded, nuanced and impressive speech on race last week this all has a whiff of low-brow opportunism and demagougery.

Gennaro Likes Dinero But He's Mad at Me

He was not happy with today's column either. Instead of calling me, he called my editor this morning.

His complaint? Not that there were factual mistakes in the column. Not that I misquoted him. His complaint was I never identified myself as a newspaper person.

I sure did.

When I called him last Thursday at the number I had for his office, I told his secretary, Tiffany, who I was. We had a nice talk. She thinks Gennaro is a "great guy," but then, she said, she's only worked for him for a month.

In any case, he called me back very quickly after Tiffany said she would try to get a hold of him.

Gennaro and I had a nice talk too. He was quite forthcoming, right up to admitting he was late checking himself into jail.

Anyway, when he called me on Sunday to complain about what he believed was unfair in my column, he didn't mention not knowing who I was or what I did for a living. He just seemed to think I'd been harder on him than I should been.

Given that he didn't deny stuffing his client's house with 11 tenants, serving her with eviction papers and that as the trustee of property, he never paid a dime of her mortgage, I thought it was pretty gutsy for him to talk to me at all.

Now, he's saying he didn't know he was talking to a journalist. Gennaro is the gift that keeps on giving. And taking, if Makra Opoku can be believed.

She's suing him, alleging fraud and other not nice things. The DAs office also continues to investigate his activities.

I have a question for Gino? Who did he think I was - asking all those impertinent questions - if not a journalist? A vacuum cleaner salesman?

This Does Not Compute

Right next to me is a copy of "Unstoppable Global Warming - Every 1,500 Years," by S. Fred Singer and Dennis Avery, which claims that global warming is more episodic than many scientists have acknowledged and caused by solar cycles.

"Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years. That could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean scientists aren't quite understanding what their robots are telling them."

Somebody tell Singer, Avery and these robots that the debate about global warming is over. There is only one robot we need to pay attention to.

The Senator noted that the anger of his pastor "is real; it is powerful," and in fact it is mirrored in "white resentments." He then laid down a litany of American woe: "the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man who has been laid off," the "shuttered mill," those "without health care," the soldiers who have fought in "a war that never should have been authorized and never should've been waged," etc. Thus Mr. Obama's message is we "need unity" because all Americans are victims, racial and otherwise; he even mentioned working for change by "binding our particular grievances."

No Surrender

So we did not turn Baghdad into a democratic city on a hill, and we learned that the dismantling of Sunni tyranny would leave the Arab world's Shiite stepchildren with primacy in Iraq. A better country has nonetheless risen, midwifed by this American war. It is not a flawless democracy. But compare it to the prison it was under Saddam, the tyranny next door in Damascus and the norms of the region, and we can have a measure of pride in what America has brought forth in Baghdad.

The Politics of Hatred

Michael Gerson on Obama's speech:

"In Philadelphia, Obama attempted to explain Wright's anger as typical of the civil rights generation, with its "memories of humiliation and doubt and fear." But Wright's problem is exactly the opposite: He ignored the message of Martin Luther King Jr. and introduced a new generation to the politics of hatred.

King drew a different lesson from the oppression he experienced: "I've seen too much hate to want to hate myself; hate is too great a burden to bear. I've seen it on the faces of too many sheriffs of the South. ... Hate distorts the personality. ... The man who hates can't think straight; the man who hates can't reason right; the man who hates can't see right; the man who hates can't walk right."

Barack Obama is not a man who hates -- but he chose to walk with a man who does."

UPDATE: Dick Morris thinks Obama can walk this tight-rope right into the Oval Office and has good advice for him to help.

Thus, nothing could be more dangerous to Mr. Obama's political aspirations than the revelation that he, the son of a white woman, sat Sunday after Sunday -- for 20 years -- in an Afrocentric, black nationalist church in which his own mother, not to mention other whites, could never feel comfortable. His pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, is a challenger who goes far past Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson in his anti-American outrage ("God damn America").

How does one "transcend" race in this church? The fact is that Barack Obama has fellow-traveled with a hate-filled, anti-American black nationalism all his adult life, failing to stand and challenge an ideology that would have no place for his own mother. And what portent of presidential judgment is it to have exposed his two daughters for their entire lives to what is, at the very least, a subtext of anti-white vitriol?

What could he have been thinking? Of course he wasn't thinking. He was driven by insecurity, by a need to "be black" despite his biracial background. And so fellow-traveling with a little race hatred seemed a small price to pay for a more secure racial identity.

While Obama and Hillary Mud Wrestle...

Bush Like Lincoln? We'll See

Letter of the Week (so far) goes to Charles Ednie of Brookhaven who compares George Bush to Abraham Lincoln.

Though it is hard to imagine, Bush speaking as eloquently as the Great Emancipator, Ednie makes some nice points about the Civil War and how Lincoln was hated, laughed at and ridiculed during those trying times.

He doesn't mention that Lincoln's war was a war of "choice," but it was. He could have let the South peacefully secede but he didn't. This is why the "war between the states" is still referred to by southerners as "the war of northern aggression."

As I have said, Ednie says only time will tell whether deposing Saddam and nation building in Iraq was a wise thing to do. Those who claim to know already, one way or the other, by definition don't know what they are talking about, any more than John Wilkes Booth knew what he was talking about when he declared Lincoln a "tyrant" after shooting him in the back of the head.

Less of, But Still a Travesty

Fred Moran was sentenced yesterday to six months probation and a $10,000 fine for his alleged extortion attempt against a developer.

I say alleged, even though a jury convicted him of bribery. I'm betting his conviction is overturned by an appeals court that recognizes we'd have to lock up just about every politician in America if what Moran was found guilty of is a crime.

This is nothing short of prosecutorial abuse.

The man asked for no money and took no money for himself. While negotiating the price of the Haverford State Hospital property as a public official, he tried to get the developer to pay $500,000 more when the deal changed.

His intent was to benefit the people of his community. Even if an ancillary benefit of being well thought of by his constituents might have accrued to him that is an amazing and terrible reason to charge anyone with a CRIME!

This case reeked from the very beginning. If Moran can charged, so can the Attorney General of Pa. -- with prosecutorial misconduct. After all, can we not wonder his motive in bringing this case at all. Can we not suppose that the AG wanted to be thought of as a crusader against political corruption? Maybe to help him get elected governor one day?

Let's keep it simple people. "Any public official (anyone acting on behalf of the United States, such as a senator, witness, or juror) who demands, receives, or accepts a bribe in exchange for orchestrating an illegal change in his duties" is guilty of bribery.

Nothing like that was proven in the Moran case. And yet we say that Moran got a "break." Well, maybe he did yesterday. But if Moran is an example of the luck of the Irish. I'm glad I'm English.

The War is Over and We Won

I have noticed that many editorial pages are bemoaning the five-year anniversary of the start of the Iraq War, including our own.

The recent headline on our editorial is lifted from the title of the anti-war documentary, "No End in Sight."

Well, not to put too fine a point on it, the Iraq War is over and we won.

We won it early, the day the Baathist government of Saddam Hussein fell with not a crash but a whimper.

After that, it was a mop-up operation and it remains one. The difficulty with this endeavor was never the winning of the war, it was the winning of the peace. Getting rid of Saddam Hussein and his henchmen, proved far easier than even the most optimistic hawks could have hoped for. The Not-So-Grand Bluffer proved not to have all the WMD that he pretended to have hidden from UN weapons inspectors. He got called and he had squat. American and allied forces rolled over his supposedly scary and loyal troops like butter.

The war was won. The mission was accomplished. Then the hard part started.

The difficulty, as all reasonable people knew from the start, was in building the first Arab democracy in the Middle East. And it remains so. Getting people from different religious sects and tribes who have been oppressed and ruled over for centuries to govern themselves is no small trick.

It takes money (ours), blood (mostly theirs) and time.

Five years later, a democratic central government is in place. But more importantly, with the brave and necessary help of U.S. Armed forces, community organizations in cities across Iraq are building semi-democratic institutions from the ground up.

This remains a work in progress. After five years of hard work and bloodshed there is an end in sight. That end is not the withdrawal of all U.S. troops, any more than that was the goal of the war in Europe during WWII. The goal is a stable, non-threatening, and reasonably democratic Iraq.

It wasn't that before we invaded. It is a lot closer to that now that Saddam is dead and his oppressive regime gone. And today, according to recent polls and despite much knashing of teeth by liberal editorialists, a majority of Americans believe we will ulitimately prevail in Iraq.

It took America years of political wrangling and debate to fashion a contitutional government. And that was without gross interference of our neighbors and terrorists bent on our distruction.

Coming out of the constitutional convention of 1787, Ben Franklin was asked what type of government he and his fellow had devised for the country. "A republic," he replied, "if you can keep it."

There are plenty of defeatists and peaceniks in our communities who literally hate the idea of success in Iraq. They hate it because it would mean democracy will have been brought there on the barrel of a gun. And they don't like guns. They conveniently forget that is how our ancestors won the right to rule themselves.

Whether invading Iraq to depose a brutal dictator was worth the cost in time, blood, and money only time will tell.

But, according to the men who are there, men like Gen. David Petraeus, the withdrawal of all our troops could allow al Qaida and other terrorist groups to stage a comeback. Until, the Iraqi government is capable of dealing with these groups on their own, we should ignore the bleatings of the Cindy Sheehan Left and stay the course.

In His Shoes...

"Can there really be a man living, after all, who would relish the idea that every detail of his sex life, past and present, would be revealed to the public and those whom he loves?...

"I wish I could say that I felt sorry for Spitzer, but I don't. His statement that "I have disappointed and failed to live up to the standard I expected of myself" makes him sound like the disgraced member of a politburo indulging in self-criticism before being sent into exile in Siberia or Kazakhstan. On the other hand, I don't want to be too hard on him, just in case someone investigates me one day. The fact is that I too have failed to live up to the standard I expected of myself."

Mortgage Crisis A-Go-Go

In writing about the crazy situation Makra Opoku finds herself, I didn't get into one thing: the amount she paid for her Darby Township home in the first place.

According to the deed, she paid $240,000 for the Sharon Avenue house, which she purchased from "friends" who were also from Liberia. They, however, bought the 5-6 bedroom home just a few years earlier for $20,000.

Did they really fix up the property enough to justify the $191,000 mortgage she was granted by the mortgage company?

If the mortage company forecloses will it get anything close to that? Not from what I saw. No wonder there's a mortgage crisis in America.

In the meantime, I look forward to hearing from Gennaro Rauso, the "self taught paralegal" and real estate genius who stuffed 11 squabbling tenants in the house to... well, just read the column.

A Real Bribery Case

Spencerblog has very critical of the bribery case against Haverford Township's Fred Moran, who as a public official attempted to get the best deal possible for his township during negotiations with a developer.

There was no evidence presented in court that he attempted to extort money for himself, a family member, or friend.

Zillionaire class action attorney Dickie Scruggs may not be guilty of participating in a scheme to pay $40,000 to a federal judge for a favorable ruling in this case, but at least the prosecutors know what a real bribery case looks like.

Keith Olbermann: The GOP's Best Friend

O's Minister and His Deck of Race Cards

Obama's "spiritual advisor" has a tendency to sound a lot like anti-Semite and racist Louis Farrakhan.

"America is still the No. 1 killer in the world. . . . We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns, and the training of professional killers . . . We bombed Cambodia, Iraq and Nicaragua, killing women and children while trying to get public opinion turned against Castro and Ghadhafi . . . We put [Nelson] Mandela in prison and supported apartheid the whole 27 years he was there. We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God."

For a candidate who is supposed to transcend race, he's keeping pretty big company with a major league racialist.

The EWC is Scandalized

NEW YORK - At a hastily scheduled morning press conference at the headquarters of New York's exclusive Emperors Club prostitution ring, high priced call girl "Kristen" announced that she would temporarily step aside in the wake of charges that she had engaged in sex with New York Governor Eliot Spitzer.

"I made a serious mistake and betrayed the trust of my co-workers, my many clients, and my pimps," she said in a quiet voice cracking with emotion. "I will be taking a leave of absence to earn their forgiveness, and redeem myself in the eyes of the entire expensive whore community."

Picozzi Rests in Peace

Bribe A Bad Teacher to Quit

Spencerblog just discovered this e-mail from somebody named Craig Bannister:

"Americans are being asked to vote for the ten worst union-protected teachers in a contest that will offer a $10,000 bribe to each of the "winners" if they'll never teach again.

"Unions "have made it nearly impossible to fire bad teachers," which is a threat to education of America's children, the contest sponsor says.

"The contest is part of a campaign to show the adverse impact that the powerful teachers' unions -- especially the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers -- have on children, schools, and politics.

"Most teachers are doing a wonderful job under difficult circumstances," the sponsoring group says. "The overall effect of teachers unions on public education, however -- when lawmakers and voters leave their power unchecked -- is far from positive."

Oh My Aching Bank Account III

Diane Marish, the Primos cleaning lady who alerted me to the shady financial practices of Swarthmore chiropractor Hania Danko, writes in to say that Sovereign Bank has returned the $5,160 withdrawn from her account by Danko.

Glad to hear it, seeing as how Spencerblog is a Sovereign Bank customer.

I also heard from a fairly prominent chiropractor who happens to live in Swarthmore who says he's spoken to Danko and feels badly for her. He says she got mixed up with the wrong company and did things she shouldn't have.

She may well be a sympathetic figure, but the people she tried to rip off for thousands aren't feeling so charitable right now. Maybe later.

Whores for Spitzer: The Press

The very definition of a rouge prosecutor:

"Mr. Spitzer's main offense as a prosecutor is that he violated the basic rules of fairness and due process: Innocent until proven guilty; the right to your day in court. The Spitzer method was to target public companies and officials, leak allegations and out-of-context emails to a compliant press, watch the stock price fall, threaten a corporate indictment (a death sentence), and then move in for a quick settlement kill. There was rarely a trial, fair or unfair, involved."

Mamet: I'm a Born-Again, Thoughtful Progressive

Too often, he writes, government intervention in the lives of its citizens leads to "sorrow."

Money Q:

"I began reading not only the economics of Thomas Sowell (our greatest contemporary philosopher) but Milton Friedman, Paul Johnson, and Shelby Steele, and a host of conservative writers, and found that I agreed with them: a free-market understanding of the world meshes more perfectly with my experience than that idealistic vision I called liberalism."

Appealing for Common Sense

This case stunk from the get go. But I give the appeal less than a 50 percent chance of overturning the jury's verdict. Judges are loathe to do so, especially in political cases.

Moran tried to goose up a developer's offer during negotiations for the Haverford State property. There is no evidence or even an accusation that he sought to benefit financially himself. He was only trying to get the best deal for the township that he could.

The state claims he was trying to benefit politically by winning the esteem of the voters and that amounts to "bribery." Unreal.

As far as I can see, he's only guilty of being stupid and clumsy. Referring to his own suggestion of more money to the township as "extortion" was certainly dumb. Criminal? I didn't see it then. And I don't see it now.

Moran would have a better chance on appeal if he'd been accused of killing somebody.

This is a murder without, not just a body, but even a missing person.

The jury blew it. Maybe a judge or several judges will set it right. But I doubt it.

Governor Risky Business

UPDATE: Political analyst Larry Sabato is on FOX saying, "It's the hypocrisy, stupid."

Any other governor who didn't ride into office accusing other people, sometimes falsely, of committing crimes might survive such a scandal.

Not Spitzer. He's gone, baby, gone. And good riddance.

UPDATE II: Conservative Tucker Carlson attacks the press for playing up the Spitzer scandal.

"I would argue, if you're against Eliot Spitzer, and I think his public career has been shameful, this is not the way to get him," said Carlson, whose show's cancellation was announced on Monday. "Spitzer's true sins, in my view, are the ones that he commits in public, crushing other people for the sake of his own political career, for instance, which has been the hallmark of his time in public life. Not going to a hooker. That's no way to get, in my opinion, your political enemy. So to see the press getting all high-handed about the fact that grown man went to a prostitute is nauseating."

This isn't the press getting all "high handed." This is the press covering a national story of sex, crime and hypocrisy. Carlson, I think, is right when he says that this is not one of the "sleazier things" Spitzer has done.

But it is criminal, it is hypocritical and it's a great national story.

Rep. Peter King (R-New York) calls Spitzer "one of the most unforgiving and self-righteous individuals I've ever known in public life." There are dozens of Wall Street types who would fully agree.

Public Schools and Humming for Dollars

Letter of the Week honors go to my old friend Charlotte Hummel, William Penn School District Board member and partisan Democratic activist.

After congratulating St. Cyril's catholic school in Lansdowne for staying open and wishing it "great success," Ms. Hummel, once again, seeks to 'educate' the "public about public education." What would we do without her?

She fears our readers might have been misled by a recent editorial that said parochial schools do their work without taxpayer help.

Ms. Hummel writes:

"All taxpayers do indeed help the parochial schools. There are taxpayer-funded services provided to students who attend religious schools, including transportation and certain special-educational services.

"Moreover, as non-profit organizations, parochial schools and their sponsoring parishes are tax exempt and donations to those entities are tax deductible."

She is, of course, correct that schools like St. Cyril's get this sort of help from the taxpayers. They get it, though, after many years of fighting for it politically. Why, the parents of Catholic school kids, asked should all their tax dollars go to supporting government schools when certain government services should be made available to all children regardless of where their parents chose to send them to school?

It was a powerful enough argument to force state legislators to recognize the concerns raised.

Still and to this day, however, people who send their kids to private and parochial schools don't get nearly the "help" that public school institutions get.

Teachers unions and organizations like the Pennsylvania State Education Association jealously guard the resources that accrue to their schools and constantly demand more.

While good, small Catholic schools like are allowed to fail for lack of resources, large, lousy public schools are kept kept in business and are allowed to stay large and lousy.

Ms. Hummel complains it is only because of the unequal distribution of resources that some public schools are as bad as they are. The public knows better.

Writes Ms. Hummel:

"Those of us who want the best possible education for all children are not served when one system or choice is pitted against the other."

Really? Since when? Rarely has competition in this country not helped to improve a particular good or service. While government-supported monopolies serve the interests of a few (like government teachers and their unions) competition and free markets serve the interests of the many. Ms. Hummel, in a fashion of a government bureaucrat, claims otherwise.

It is no thanks to her and other critics of school choice that schools like St. Cyril's manage to stay open. It is only thanks to the heroic efforts of certain parents, teachers, administrators and private-sector community leaders. Other such schools continue to close in numbers too depressing to recount.

In the meantime, Ms. Hummel's school district receives tens of millions of dollars from state and local taxpayers to remain a going concern while NOT providing the "best possible" education to "all children."

"If," Ms. Hummel writes, "our public schools are not as good as they should be, it is 'we the people' who need to take responsibility and act accordingly in the choices we make when it comes to those who are supposed to represent us in this important work."

Exactly. And supporting school "choice" with more taxpayer dollars might be one way to do this.

Clearly though, when Ms. Hummel refers to "those who are supposed to represent us," she means people like, well, herself. And, of course, the public school teachers whose interests she takes so much to heart.

Nothing against those teachers, many of whom work heroically themselves to try to teach in environments less conducive to learning than they ought to be.

But once again, Ms. Hummel shows she has a fundamental misunderstanding of what makes schools work. Money is essential to the existence of schools but not determinative in how successful they are.

And all the money in the world won't help some school districts, as Federal Judge Russell Clark proved back in the 1980s when he showered the Kansas City, Mo. district with hundreds of millions of dollars to no avail in improved academic achievement.

Maybe it is time to give choice and competition more of a chance.

The charter school movement is one step. Vouchers would be another. But they will only come over Ms. Hummel's politically dead body and the corpses of union leaders.

Women Are From Venus, Men Are From Delco

Much swooning for Bill Clinton in Delco. A lot of it from Swarthmore students.

Go figure.

I especially enjoyed this quote from Swarthmore's Jane Liefabell.

“I think there’s still a lot of misogyny in our society,” said Liefabell, an 18-year-old religious studies major... “For some reason, I think we’re able to get over the race issue more easily than we’re able to get over the gender issue.”

If that's true, I, as a practicing and proud philogynist, have a theory as to why.

People of different races, really aren't that different from one another. While men and woman really are.

Most voters aren't turned off by Hillary Clinton because she's a woman. They are turned off by her because she's HILLARY CLINTON.

After all, wasn't it a female Harvard professor who called her a "monster"?

For some reason, out of 50 starting students, no women signed up. Misogyny? I don't think so. Neither does Sommers. Long piece but worth reading.

UPDATE II: Mark Steyn has a funny column about the Dems obsession with identity politics.

Money Q:

"As Ali Gallagher, a white female (sorry, this identity-politics labeling is contagious) from Texas, told the Washington Post: "A friend of mine, a black man, said to me, 'My ancestors came to this country in chains; I'm voting for Barack.' I told him, 'Well, my sisters came here in chains and on their periods; I'm voting for Hillary.'"

"When everybody's a victim, nobody's a victim. Poor Ms. Gallagher can't appreciate the distinction between purely metaphorical chains and real ones, or even how offensive it might be to assume blithely that there's no difference whatsoever."

Oh My Aching Bank Account II

Joanne Bongiovanni calls in to report her husband, George, was also a patient of Swarthmore chiropractor Hania Danko McCracken.

She says on Jan. 4, Danko-McCracken tried to hit her husband's Discover card for $5,000. And when that was denied, she tried to hit again for another $5,000.

Joanne says George started seeing Danko a year and a half ago for back pain after meeting her at a fitness seminar in King of Prussia.

He paid her $2,500 up front but was told by her the rest of his bills were being taken care of by Blue Cross.

When George called Blue Cross to ask why he never got any statements, he was told they didn't always send statements for that kind of treatment.

Joanne also reports that a couple of months ago she spotted Danko in front of her at the grocery store with a cart full of food but that she left it all at the store when her own credit card failed to go through.

Joanne says she has reported it all to the Delaware County DAs office Criminal Investigations Division, which was easy, since Joanne works for CID herself.

The Best... 'er Person

It's all very reminicient of Gore Vidal's "The Best Man," about an Adlai Stevenson type candidate for president forced to choose between maintaining his principles and getting down and dirty for a political street fight.

In the end, he chooses principle and loses the nomination. But not to the awful, disgusting, opportunistic streetfighting opponent. A non-descript third pol is selected as his party's standard bearer.

Their Aching Bank Accounts

Swarthmore police and the DA's office are asking any other clients of chiropractor Hania Danko who operated the Maximized Living Health Center in Swarthmore who think they may have been victimized to call them.

Nick Picozzi, R.I.P.

I've always loved the line about what makes firefighters so special: "As we run out, they run in."

As tributes go, they don't get much better than Chief Fuller's in today's paper:

"Chief Ray Fuller said the firefighter was “one of his best,” tackling any task that needed his attention. On Wednesday, that meant suppressing a fire that engulfed a home in Upper Chichester.“When that whistle blows, keeping Nick on the truck is impossible. He lived and breathed for the fire service,” said Fuller at an afternoon press conference at the Lower Chichester Municipal Building.“I can’t explain this tragic loss,” said Fuller, standing in front of a podium in full-dress uniform, his emotions showing clearly on his face. “He was one of our better firefighters. I’m a father, too. As far as I’m concerned, today I lost one of (my children). Nick was like a son to me.”

Mizani and Her Parents II

There has been a nice response to Wednesday's story about Shayla Montgomery, Steve Tucker and their 7-month-old daughter Mizani.

Already a couple of potential job offers have come in for Steve.

Other readers have asked if they can send the family a donation to help with Mizani's care. I have been told there will be gratefully accepted.

Steve and Shayla didn't want me to give out their address so I volunteered to forward donations along. They can be sent to me c/o the Daily Times.

Shayla said Mizani had a bad night last night, but is better today.

Steve went out on at least two job interviews today.

I'll keep readers posted.

UPDATE: Mailbag:

Dear Mr. Spencer,

My name is Linda and I work for Granite Run Ob GYN the practice that delivered Mizani and I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for doing the artice about Shayla, Stephen and Mizani.

They are very special people and as you wrote go above and beyond for Baby Mizani. There are not very many young people in this world today like Stephen and Shayla and I am very proud of them and have told them so many times. They so deserved what you did for them and again I want to THANK YOU! I just wanted you to know that I so appreciated the article and you for doing it! Have a very special week Gil.

More About Mizani and Her Parents

Today's column is about a young Chester couple and their serverely disabled daughter. Her name is Mizani.

She is not expected to live long, but she has lived a damn site longer that any medical expert gave her a chance in hell of.

No doubt the story will raise concerns about the responsibility of two young people having children they can't afford and depending on taxpayers dollars to subsidize their questionable choices.

These are fair questions and yet I barely raise any of them in the column.Two reasons: Space and taste.

But because here at Spencerblog, we have unlimited space and questionable taste -- such matters can be gotten in to.

First of all, I hope I made it clear in the column that I was enormously impressed with Steve and Shayla. There are nice people in a tough situation that they are handling with uncommon grace and fortitude.

As I mentioned in the column it was hospice nurse Helen Golden (more about her later) who wrote me about them and their heroic efforts on behalf of Mizani. That they don't see them as "heroic" but only as the kind of care any mother and father would give to any infant, makes their story all the more poignant, in my view.

Though I can't say I know the Steve and Shayla well, Helen has worked with them for several months.

She wrote me that she has been a nurse for 25 years and that she has never seen a couple more engaged, more willing to learn and to work to give their daughter the best life she can have, while she has it.

Mizani is considered terminally ill, which is why she qualified for Medicaid paid hospice. So critical is her condition that she could just as easily be hospitalized at much greater cost to the taxpayers. But Steve and Shayla have chosen to care for her themselves. As Shayla says, nobody can take better care of her baby than she can.

Part of the purpose of Helen writing me, was in the hopes of helping Steve get a job. He has been looking for some weeks, but an 6-year-old conviction on a gun possession charge works against him.

After meeting him, I believe Steve would enventually get work, with or without my or Helen's help. He is cheerful and unfailingly polite. He has what most people (and employers) would recognize as a winning personality. If he has the work ethic to match it, he'll do fine.

It is, of course, possible he fronting all these pleasant personality traits but I would bet not and Helen, who has known the family longer, would bet not as well.

As for the gun charge...

People who live in high crime neighborhoods are often caught in a sort of Catch-22. Our society and the law actively discourages even law-abiding citizens from owning guns on the theory (and experience) that no good can come from more and more people being armed.

But put yourself in a person like Steve's place.

You well know that other young men in your neighborhood are going around armed. Some are violent predators. Others are quick to take offense to slights and signs of disrespect. In such neighborhoods, people often get shot for very small potatoes. Yet, we criminalize the act of easily arming oneself for mere defensive purposes.

How do we know that someone is carrying a gun strictly for self defense? We don't. So the law (and cops) assume (not unreasonably) otherwise. But this makes criminals of people who had no intention of doing anything other than being able to defend themselves (and sometimes others).

Of course, some will point out that if someone wants to legally carry a gun all they have to do is apply for a carry permit. But they are not easy to come by. You have to be approved and checked out by the county sheriff's office. An application by a 20-year-old black male from Chester would not be cheerfully granted.

It was almost touching to learn that after Steve was arrested and informed that he needed a license to carry a gun, he actually went to apply for one. As if, with a felony on his record, he could get one.

This is a flaw in the law, one that works disproportionately against normally law-abiding citizens who live in high crime areas. But I doubt it will ever be addressed.

As for Shayla having another baby so soon, while still caring for Mizani, there will understandably be plenty of people who think she's being irresponsible, if not downright crazy.

Yet, despite this being something of a "surprise" to Shayla (which is to say, not a planned pregnancy) she doesn't appear to be on the verge of being overwhelmed. She has a very involved network of family members to help her out. And she is an obviously capable mother, even at her young age.

There are people who fall into being long-term burdens on the taxpayers and society, I'll be surprised if Steve and Shayla are two of them.

I talked to her this morning, and to her mother, Ramona, and Helen Golden who was at Shayla's apartment visiting Mizani.

All is well. They reported they liked the article are were proud to see Mizani on the front page of the Daily Times.

Steve was not there. He was out looking for work.

(Blogmeister's note: Since its inception, this blog has tolerated much in the way of lively and aggressive debate and sometimes even insulting comments. It won't in this case. Inappropriately nasty remarks about this family will be stricken.)

The Audacity of Cynicism

The Obama campaign is caught red-handed spinning (i.e. lying) about comments one of his advisors made to Canadian officials not to take seriously his campaign statements concerning NAFTA.

To Midwestern unionists, Obama criticized the free-trade agreement as unfair to American workers and promised to amend it, while one of his top advisors secretly advised jumpy Canadian trade officials of Obama's insincerity on the issue.

Chances are the mini-scandal won't hurt him in today's important primaries but it could come back to haunt him during a general election should he win the nomination.

Oil's Well, Except the Price

"The world is not running out of oil anytime soon. A gradual transitioning on the global scale away from a fossil-based energy system may in fact happen during the 21st century. The root causes, however, will most likely have less to do with lack of supplies and far more with superior alternatives. The overused observation that "the Stone Age did not end due to a lack of stones" may in fact find its match."

Joe Kelly is Dead

Havertown Republican Joe Kelly, he of the wonderful singing voice and ever-changing political alliances, has died.

He made a lot of enemies over the course of his political career but he maintained just as many good friends. One of those friends tells me he was one of the few if not the only pols in Delaware County history to serve county council for 10 years.

The last few years were a tough go for Joe. But whenever I talked to him, he always maintained that Irish sense of humor and he never lost that twinkle in his eye. R.I.P.

Out of Iraq

With Friends Like These...

"Feminist icon" Ms. Gloria Steinem went stumping for Hillary Clinton trying to pump life into her ailing campaign.

In so doing she accused America of being hopelessly anti-woman and denigrated the military service of John McCain and even John Kerry.

She even made fun of McCain being a prisoner of war, saying that if name were Joan McCain and had been captured people would ask what he had done wrong to be in the hands of the enemy.

"... from George Washington to Jack Kennedy and PT-109," Steinem told a newspaper, we have behaved as if killing people is a qualification for ruling people.”

Not really, although we have rarely held it against them. But does Ms. Steinem really mean to suggest that the president of the United States rules over the people? Isn't that what kings and tyrants do? I thought Hillary Clinton was running to serve the people, not rule over them.

The Clinton camp has already disavowed some of what Steinem said, especially the shots at McCain.

It seems Hillary Clinton needs Gloria Steinem like a fish needs a bicycle.